


Stormborn

by Advent_of_Shadows



Category: Highschool DxD (Anime)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:20:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Advent_of_Shadows/pseuds/Advent_of_Shadows
Summary: Forced to stay home during his class's school trip, Meguri Souji never could have imagined that his life would be put in danger. After a run in with supernatural forces, he has no choice but to confront his past and decide how to approach the future. One thing is certain: he isn't going to be allowed to live a carefree life.
Relationships: Kuroka (Highschool DxD)/Original Male Character(s)
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

In an ideal world, Meguri Souji would have been enjoying the sights in Kyoto with the rest of his classmates, not facing certain danger and potentially death. But the world wasn't what anyone would call ideal. This was just another in a long line of injustices.

Forced to stay behind due to his mother’s family, Souji had decided to spend the day at the Meguri’s shrine just outside of Kuoh. Maintaining the place was part of his duties, and it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do.

However, after about ten minutes of traveling through the woods, an unnerving realization struck Souji. He wasn’t alone. Someone was watching him. Another thought struck him, and it was even worse than the last. Perhaps it was not someone, but rather something.

Most people thought it was just an expression. Surely there was no way someone could know when they were being watched. But truthfully, it was something primal that humanity had possessed for millennia. There was nothing supernatural about it either. It was instinctual. Knowing when a predator was watching them was as natural to prey as breathing. Sadly, few people paid their instincts the attention they deserved.

A twinge of regret flickered through his violet eyes. Perhaps ignoring the elders and traveling to Kyoto would have been a good idea, even if they attempted to carry through on their death threat. At least with Gremory and Sitri around, he might have made it out alive.

He shook his head. Asking _what if_ questions was pointless. He could not change decisions already made. Acting in the here and now was his only choice.

But what exactly was he going to do? That was the real question.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure what kind of predator he was dealing with. With something normal like a wolf or a bear, he could just find a safe place to hide and wait it out. Responding with violence to scare it off was another viable option. But there were other kinds of predators out there. Ones that were far more dangerous than hundreds of wolves or bears. What if it was a supernatural predator? There were some species of yokai that treated humans as little more than sheep.

Expelling a breath, Souji gripped his walking stick a little harder and picked up his pace, though he kept his movement below a run. Running from a predator rarely worked out, so he instead moved purposefully, as if he had somewhere to be. Having come through here so often, he barely made a sound, nimbly avoiding fallen branches and twigs. Only the rustling of fallen brown leaves accompanied his movements.

When a few minutes passed without the hidden predator making a move, he bit back a curse. If it had been an animal, it would have made its move already. He was as sure of that as he could be. That meant that a genuine monster was likely watching him.

He still felt the ominous gaze when he reached his original destination a small, dilapidated shrine. Even in its current condition, the shrine’s aura could easily be felt by anyone that neared it. It held a sort of power that few places in Kuoh could match.

The moment he crossed the threshold of the shrine, he exhaled a breath that he hadn’t even known he had been holding. His knees nearly buckled as the adrenaline that drove him began to ebb. But he couldn’t afford to relax too much. Not just yet.

He closed the doors behind him and scanned the interior of the shrine. Contrary to the outside, it was almost pristine on the inside. Inari’s altar was immaculate, though the ones dedicated to the other kami weren’t in disrepair either.

If his suspicions were right and a monster was pursuing him, the shrine would be the safest place for him. The Shinto gods were passive when it came to the affairs of outsiders, but they acted swiftly and decisively when it came to their domain. Shinto shrines were their territory when it came right down to it, and they would not hesitate to smite any monster that dared to set foot within. Even those associated with other factions wouldn’t enter such a place uninvited.

He took his backpack off and set it to the size. It contained a number of cleaning supplies and candles, the usual supplies he used for maintaining the shrine. Now, however, they were extra weight.

Souji gripped the walking stick that he carried and pulled it apart ever so slightly. It was actually a _shikomizue_ , a Japanese cane sword that had been a gift from his father. He might not have inherited the Meguri clan’s gifts, but his father had been insistent that he learn the way of the sword regardless. Still, his training wasn’t so extensive that he could claim to be a master swordsman, even by mundane standards. It was, however, the only weapon he currently had at his disposal.

In the polished steel of the blade, he could see his features reflected. Even in the dimly lit shrine, his ashen hair and violet eyes shone clearly. Turning his gaze away from the steel, he was drawn to the beaded bracelet that adorned his right wrist. On second thought, his sword wasn’t his only weapon, but _that_ wasn’t something that he could rely upon lightly. Sighing, he sheathed his shikomizue and made his way to another part of the shrine.

Like many shrines, this one was both a place of worship and safekeeping. Within this chamber of the shrine, a single katana was displayed. Its blade shone with light that was not reflected from any external source. Rather, its origin was the blade itself. It was the sword of Meguri Kojirou, his late father. The sword was one of the Totsuka no Tsurugi, a type of holy sword that wasn't particularly rare or special.

His eyes lingered on the blade, sorrow upon his face. He longed to take up the sword, but in his hands, it would have been nothing but wood and steel. For him to wield it would have been an act of disrespect. His sword might have been completely ordinary, but it would have to do. Even so, he knelt before the sword with his eyes closed. When his lips moved, no words came out, but it wasn’t as if saying the words aloud would carry to his father any better.

After a long moment, he rose to his feet and made his way to the entrance of the shrine. But he had no intention of going out to face whatever had been watching him. Instead, he sat down near the door with his back against the wall and set the shikomizue within an arm’s reach.

It was technically possible to just hide inside the shrine and wait until the predator lost interest and left. Unfortunately, he had to keep the Rule of Three in mind. A human could only survive three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, or three weeks without food. Without water on his person or in the shrine, it was entirely possible that he could die before the predator left. A flicker of dark amusement brought a smile to his face. Someone of that bloodline dying of a lack of water. Now that was irony.

A thought struck him, and he took the phone out of his pocket. He thumbed the cheap gray plastic of the device and flipped it open, only to let out a soft curse. The battery was nearly full, but the cell service was another matter entirely. He didn’t even have a single bar. Calling for help wasn’t a possibility.

That was not the only way to call for help, admittedly, but as he glanced around the shrine, Souji knew that the other way would not work any better. He had been forced to call upon the aid of the Sitri heiress before. Doing so again would have been a simple matter, albeit a costly one. But to try doing so inside of a Shinto shrine would have been like juggling torches above a vat of oil.

Souji scowled. “So I either wait here or make a run for it.”

In theory, he could try making a run for it and calling for help once outside the shrine, but that seemed even more likely to get himself killed.

With a sigh, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Only the sound of wind from outside the shrine could be heard. Apart from that, it was almost eerily silent. Even so, knew deep down that he wasn’t alone. He couldn’t quite feel the gaze of the predator anymore. He couldn’t exactly be seen from where he was, but that wasn’t the only instinct that he was attuned with. After having lived alone for the better part of a year, he was well acquainted with the feeling of being completely alone, and that feeling was absent now.

Still, he relaxed as much as he was able to and kept his eyes closed. Sleep claimed him shortly.

* * *

The first thing Souji did after he woke up was to check his phone. Unsurprisingly, the battery hadn’t gone down much. That was one benefit of using a flip phone over a smartphone. The lack of service was unchanged as well. What he had not expected, however, was seeing that it was now just after seven o’clock in the evening. He must have been even more exhausted than he had realized. Six hours had passed while he slept.

He slowly rose to his feet and stretched. The numbness left his extremities after a few minutes, and he felt his mind begin to clear, albeit slowly. His impromptu nap had never been about getting rest. It was just the most practical way to kill a few hours and see if what had been stalking him would give up. Considering he still did not feel alone, it seemed that his stalling tactic had been in vain. At least he felt a little more refreshed now.

“I don’t hear snoring anymore. Think he’s awake now?”

The sudden words caused him to turn on his heel. The words were barely audible, but he was not quite out of earshot. The voice itself had a melodic like quality to it, something that would draw in anyone that heard it. It was not unlike what he heard from videos of popular idols.

A deep sigh could be heard following the words. “Souji Doumon, we would like to speak with you. Will you step outside so that we may do so?” This new voice was not light like the first. Rather, it had a slightly deeper voice, one that could be described as both husky and sultry.

He did not answer at first. Instead, he calmed himself and reviewed what he knew. First, there were at least two individuals outside of the shrine. One sounded young, perhaps no older than fifteen, while the other sounded to be several years older than him. Admittedly, how old they sounded wasn’t a great indicator of anything, but it was one of the few details he had. Second, he had certainly felt as though at least one predator had been watching him earlier, and by their words, they had been waiting outside the shrine while he slept. More than likely, the two feminine voices belonged to individuals that were not human. He wasn’t too sure if they meant harm to him even if he was right. And third, the second speaker had made a serious mistake when she spoke his name. He hadn’t used that surname in years, and the fact that she had spoken it in the wrong order meant that she was foreign at the very least.

Ordinarily, he would have seen no reason to speak with the pair with all that in mind, but that first detail left him no choice. If there were multiple people outside, that meant that they could take turns watching the shrine. There was no way that they would fail to outlast him, an escape was even more unlikely.

With a sigh, he picked up the shikomizue from where he had set it earlier and stepped in front of the door. With his sheathed sword in his left hand, he placed his right hand on the door.

“I’m coming out.” As much as he didn’t want to, he couldn’t see any other choice.

As he stepped outside, he immediately spotted the two figures about ten meters ahead of him. They were both incredibly beautiful and female, but he knew that neither one was human immediately.

The one on his left looked to be even younger than him due to her barely noticeable curves and diminutive height. Her blonde hair was fashioned in twintails, and he could make out her vivid blue eyes without trying. The elaborate Gothic Lolita dress she wore was perhaps the most noticeable thing about her though. There was not a doubt in his mind that she had been the first speaker.

The one on his right was like day and night with the other. She was about as tall as him with long navy-blue hair that fell below her waist. Her eyes were dark, and with the sun having already set, he couldn’t tell anything more about them. Even if the area had been illuminated, he wasn’t sure he would have noticed her eyes regardless. The maroon outfit she wore was strained by her incredibly generous curves. She didn’t have the most voluptuous appearance he had ever seen, but that outfit enhanced it in ways that the school uniform did not.

There was silence until the door closed behind Souji, but he made no effort to move beyond that. There was a measure of safety in his current position. If the women used any kind of ranged attack and missed, an angry Shinto god would show up. If the fact that they had refused to enter the shrine was any indication, then they must have been aware of the repercussions of intruding upon the territory of the kami.

“May I ask why exactly you two are here?” There was a coldness to Souji’s words. It was not a threatening coldness, however. Rather, he spoke politely and utterly without emotion. The last thing he wanted to show a predator was weakness.

The one on the left opened her mouth to speak, but she stopped when the more mature woman lifted a hand.

“Souji Doumon, my name is Kalawarna, and my associate is Mittelt. We are here on behalf of an organization that has watched over mankind for many years.”

It took considerable willpower for him not to stiffen at the name, but her words quickly pushed that to the back of his mind. An organization of watchers… that answered one question at least.

“Grigori, you mean.” Souji’s words were flat and earned an appraising look from Kalawarna while Mittelt showed an expression of surprise. “I’m familiar with the Books of Enoch, at least in passing. What do the fallen Watchers want with me?”

Kalawarna and Mittelt shared an incomprehensible look before the former spoke. “We were sent to observe you on the orders of our superiors. As you detected us, we have no choice but to be more direct than we would otherwise.” With that, she gave a nod to the younger looking girl.

At the gesture, Mittelt moved. Describing what she did as movement failed to give the action the gravity that it deserved. He saw her body tense and the beginning of a step. And then she was gone. The next thing he knew, she was at his side, swinging a wicked looking pink spear at him.

If he had just stood there, Souji was certain that he would have died. He did not, however, stand unmoving. He instead moved closer to Mittelt and met her spear with his sheathed shikomizue.

Under ordinary circumstances, her spear should have cleaved through his weapon effortlessly. It was easy enough to recognize Mittelt as a fallen angel, which meant that her spear was made of condensed holy energy. Against such a weapon, ordinary steel shouldn’t have been an obstacle. However, even as deadly as her spear was, it mattered little when she couldn’t put the necessary force behind a swing. His counter was perfect, and she only managed to cut into the scabbard of the shikomizue. The blade was unblemished from the encounter.

Surprise could clearly be seen in her striking eyes. She hadn’t been expecting him to so nimbly block her strike. That surprise cost her precious seconds. By the time she overcame them, his fist crashed against her face. The impact of knuckles against her nose earned a sharp cry of pain as she staggered back, her spear of light fading as her concentration broke.

As she retreated a few steps, Souji grasped the hilt of his shikomizue and drew it free from the damaged scabbard. In a single motion, the blade leapt from the scabbard towards Mittelt’s exposed throat. Mere moments before it would have claimed the fallen angel’s lifeblood, a spear of light struck the blade halfway down its length. His swing passed harmlessly by Mittelt as half of his sword fell to the earth.

Glancing at the other fallen angel, Souji found that Kalawarna had taken to the air. A pair of black wings held her in the air. The dark feathers reminded him of a crow, but her wings did not move an inch as they kept her suspended a dozen feet up. It was only thanks to her flight that she had been able to throw her spear of light at the right angle to break his sword without hitting the shrine.

Souji’s eyes darted between the fallen angels several times. Mittelt was staring at him in fury even as blood marred her beautiful face. Kalwarna, on the other hand, appeared to be calm with undertones of relief evident in her features.

Disarmed as he now was, Souji knew that he was at their mercy. As much as he wished otherwise, he had no choice but to fall back on his last resort before either of the fallen angels could react.

The broken sword fell from his hand, but his resolve was stronger than ever. Without that resolve, he could never have done what he planned. Only a deliberate action could break the seal. Such was its nature.

As the broken sword hit the ground, both fallen angels found their eyes drawn to it. That distraction allowed Souji to slip a single finger between the beaded bracelet and his skin. With a sharp tug, the bracelet snapped and the world around him seemed to shudder as power rushed out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Just to clarify since I apparently didn't address it last chapter, I do not intend on giving Souji a harem. A pure Kuroka pairing is planned. It's possible that things will change, but I wouldn't bet on it. There's enough badly written harems on here as it is.
> 
> Also, I will generally be going for updates every other Friday so I can maintain a backlog of chapters (I'm currently four ahead, even if they haven't been updated) and so I can work on original fiction as well.
> 
> Oh and Happy New Years to you all. Hope 2020 goes better than 2021.

**Chapter Two**

Pain lanced through Souji's body as the beads dropped to the ground. It was a kind of pain that he had experienced only once before, but the intensity was on a completely new level. Waves of heat and cold, a surge of electricity, and something akin to running through a heavy downpour struck him all at once. It wasn't something he would ever really be able to explain to something either. There simply was no frame of reference that others would understand.

The next thing he knew, the pain was replaced by weariness and the beads hit the grass at his feet. As tired as he felt now, Souji couldn't help but smile a little. Over the last four years, the emptiness within had become easy to ignore, but now, it was gone.

The sealing formula inscribed into the beads had sealed away more than just the White God's tool. The powers that marked him as one of the Doumon had also been locked away by their powers. Now, it all came crashing back to him. He was complete. There would no doubt be repercussions for what he just did, but in that moment, Souji gave them no consideration.

"Shit!" Mittelt cursed as her blue eyes went wide.

She did not have time to do anything though. He merely raised a hand towards her. No further action was necessary. The air between them exploded and Mittelt was sent flying as though she were struck by a freight train.

His eyes met Kalawarna's as she hurled a spear of light at him. Unlike before, she wasn't aiming for a weapon. Of that, he was certain.

Even knowing that she meant to end him, Souji felt no fear. Instead, he spoke softly as he made a series of hand gestures. Just before the spear of light had crossed half the distance, he completed the spell, and a disc of water floated before him. With a shift in his stance, he angled the shield. When the spear hit it, it slid off its surface and went hurtling through the woods to the side of the shrine.

Kalawarna could not hide the look of shock on her face at the display.

Souji didn't say a word, merely meeting her eyes with his own. She probably believed that he used the small display of Eastern magic to show her that he didn't need the White God's tool to fight her. She didn't need to know the truth. He had no idea how to control it.

"I should kill you after what you two pulled, but I'm willing to let you walk away," he said after a tense moment of silence.

Kalawarna did not look away from him for even a moment. Uncertainty flickered across her face as she considered it. And then she spoke. "I accept your offer."

She quickly flew to her unconscious comrade and left. The entire time, Souji did not move, merely watching them carefully. Once they were gone and he could no longer feel their presence at all, he collapsed.

"Well, that could have gone worse." In all honesty, if that fight had gone on for any longer, it was entirely likely he would have died. The last thing he needed was for that power of his to go out of control again. If that had happened, he would have died, whether it was by the fallen angel's attacks or his own powers.

Shaking his head, he picked up the broken sword and cast a mournful look upon it. The whole purpose of the seal had been to keep incidents like this from happening.

"Well, that's a concern for another day."

And with that, he forced himself back to his feet and made his way back to the shrine. He was in no condition to return to town just yet.

It was just after dawn when Souji finally arrived back at his apartment. It was a fairly simple place that he had moved into after his father's passing. The previous tenant had been a foreigner, and he had left much of his furniture behind, so it had more of a western feel to it than a typical Japanese apartment. His mother would have loathed the place if she ever visited.

A derisive snort nearly escaped him at the mere thought. That woman had made her choice four years ago without looking back. Unlike his father, she had chosen her clan over them.

Shaking his head, he made his way into the bedroom and placed the broken sword upon his dresser before giving his bed a longing look. He hadn't slept since before his encounter with the two fallen angels. While fatigued after the fight, he had also been wide awake. As a result, he had merely relaxed inside the shrine while his stamina slowly recovered. After that, he had spent the rest of the night cleaning the shrine.

Before he could even think about getting cleaned up and taking a nap, soft knocking could be heard coming from the front door of the apartment.

He barely bit back a groan at the sound, but he stopped in place as he neared the living room. After the previous day, acting rashly seemed like a poor idea. So instead, he closed his eyes and pushed out his senses. It took a little bit of effort, but he managed it after a long moment. Not having had access to his magical power for the last four years made such things a little harder to manage than he'd care to admit.

A soft sigh of relief escaped his lips, and he made his way to the front door. His guest was not what he would call harmless, but she was not the type of person to act rashly. That was true of one of his guests at least.

He opened the door and found the two girls waiting patiently for him. On the left stood a young woman with hair even darker than the wings of the fallen angels he had encountered. Beneath a pair of wire-framed glasses, her violet eyes were as piercing as always. Though she was not as physically developed as many of the girls in their year, there was an undeniable maturity to her that few could match.

On the right stood another young woman from their year. With her porcelain complexion, the crimson hair that fell to her thighs, and a figure that women would literally kill for, she was easy to recognize, even if he had never spoken to her before. There was an almost child-like innocence in her bright eyes that stood in stark contrast with the other girl.

The two girls were inhumanly beautiful, but Souji did not let himself be enamored by them. In their case, inhumanly beautiful was not hyperbole. They were devils, denizens of the Underworld. Despite being indistinguishable from humans as a cursory glance, they were far from it.

"Sona Sitri, Rias Gremory, I wasn't expecting you here quite this early," Souji remarked with a patently false smile. He had been certain that they wouldn't pay him a visit until the school trip was over. Not that being wrong was an unusual experience for him. "Would you like to come in?"

Sona gave him a smile in return, though it was just as disingenuous as his own. After their interactions over the last year, neither would be easily fooled by the other.

Rias and Sona were effectively the devils that oversaw the town as their territory, though the latter only supervised a small portion of it.

"We would appreciate it, provided it is with the understanding that we shall compose ourselves as guests within your home and you as our host."

Confusion flitted across Rias's face, almost too quickly to notice, but Souji gave Sona a conciliatory nod.

There was nothing binding about it, but for those from families that clung to noble ideologies, the obligations of guest and host were about as sacred of a thing as there was. From what Souji had heard, Rias was something or a rebel among the Underworld's nobility, so it wasn't too strange that she failed to read between the lines.

Stepping to the side, Souji allowed the two girls to set foot within his apartment before closing the door.

A few minutes later, they were seated at the dining table with a cup of tea before each of them. It was nothing fancy, especially to people like Sona and Rias, but it was the best he could offer them.

After taking a sip from her cup, Sona met Souji's eyes and spoke. "As you may have inferred, the two of us are supposed to still be in Kyoto. Considering the message that we received from our peerages, it became necessary for us to return before the rest of our class."

Disappointment flashed across Rias's face at those words. She must have really been looking forward to the trip.

Souji carefully maintained a neutral expression as he took a drink, momentarily savoring the contrasting sweet and bitter flavors. It was unlikely that their peerages, or familia as some called them, had seen his encounter with the fallen angels. If Tomoe had been in the area, she would have jumped in, consequences be damned. His cousin was reckless like that. That could only mean that breaking the seal had made him stand out more than he expected.

Placing his cup back on the table, he recounted the events of the previous day, though he didn't give details on the actual fight. Sona could have easily gotten the full story out of him, but there was no way she'd call in his debt for something that minor.

Sona and Rias shared a troubled look when he finished speaking.

"Technically, the shrine is within my territory," Sona said after a long moment of silence. A shiver ran down his spine at the frosty tone. It was fortunate that her icy anger wasn't directed at him. "I will report the presence of fallen angels in my assigned territory, and if such a thing happens again when I am present, they will be dealt with thoroughly. However, I do not intend on informing anyone beyond my family about your awakening."

Rias showed a smile at the end of her statement. "Likewise, the details about your Sacred Gear will not be spread beyond my own family. The last thing either of us wants is to have others snooping around our territory."

"Right." Souji's disbelief was palpable at that. The two girls were pureblood devils. The very idea that they were going to keep what happened from spreading around aroused suspicion within him. Their kind did not generally act out of generosity.

"Would you happen to know what that Sacred Gear is?" Sona questioned, more than just curiosity filling her eyes.

A slight frown graced his face at the question. The White God wasn't exactly a subject that he was overly familiar with. He knew the basics of the Abrahamic Factions, admittedly. That was how he had figured out that the two girls from the previous evening had been fallen angels. His knowledge of the Watchers and the Heavenly Host was limited in comparison to what he knew of devils, but that was mainly a result of his cousin being one.

What exactly he should tell the girls was the big question though. Showing weakness or ignorance to them did not sit well with him. His gaze shifted to Rias for a moment. If it had been just her, he wouldn't have even invited her into his apartment. She was too unpredictable. Sona, on the other hand, had always been easy for him to understand.

After a long moment, he made his decision. "I don't know what it's called. The elders merely referred to it as one of the White God's Sacred Tools." The words sounded disgusted. A decent reproduction of how they had said it, Souji thought. "When I tapped into it four years ago, it destroyed everything around me like a natural disaster."

Rias interrupted him at that point. "I'm sorry, but did you say four years ago? There's no way I would've failed to sense you if you had been walking around with this Sacred Gear of yours active."

Annoyance welled up inside him, but Souji stamped the sensation down and glanced at Sona. "What exactly did you tell her about me?"

Sona sighed softly at that. "I never went into detail. She knows that you are my Knight's cousin and a client of mine, but that is all."

A frown twisted Rias's features at that admission.

Souji shook his head before speaking. "What she didn't tell you is that I am the first cousin of the current Genbu and an excommunicated member of the Doumon family. After the incident, all of my powers were sealed, and I was cast out. I broke that seal during the conflict with the fallen angels."

Rias made no attempt to hide her surprise. The Doumon family was one of the Five Principal Clans. Since ancient times, those five families had purified evil spirits and were bound to legendary creatures. But Rias had much more personal dealing with the Five Principal Clans if what he had heard was true. The fact that her Queen bore the name of one of those families made it seem credible.

But before she could say anything further, Souji spoke up, continuing where he had left off before her interruption. "As I was saying, it basically caused a natural disaster four years ago. And then yesterday, I tried to blast one of the fallen angels with lightning, but gale-force winds came out instead."

Sona and Rias stilled at his words. It was an inhuman stillness that he had never witnessed before. Their eyes did not so much as blink and there was no shifting in their seats as most people did unconsciously. If not for the subtle rise and fall of their chests, he might have thought that they were no longer among the living.

After a long moment, Sona steepled her hands and her eyes grew a little distant. It was an expression that he had only seen her take when they played chess. Rias, on the other hand, leaned back in her chair after the moment of stillness had passed. There was something about her expression that he would have described as anxious. Or perhaps fear.

"Meguri Souji," Sona began as her eyes focused upon him suddenly. "I wish to extend upon you the formal offer to join my peerage."

Rias stiffed at those words and looked at Sona in disbelief.

"I'll pass," Souji responded without even a moment of hesitation.

Sona did not seem bothered in the least by his words. Rather, she looked as though she had expected it. Though, given their interactions over the last year, that shouldn't have come as a surprise to him.

"And before you ask, I will not join your peerage either, Rias Gremory," Souji added when it became apparent that Sona did not have anything to say at that moment.

Rias did not bother to hide her surprise at the casual rejection.

But before Rias could interject, Sona spoke. "Ordinarily, I would hesitate before giving information freely to you, but the debt that you owe me has become exponentially more valuable."

Now it was Souji's turn to look bewildered. His brow furrowed and he stared at her in confusion. The debt between them was easy enough to understand. How that would have grown was another question entirely.

Sona smiled, and this time, it reached her eyes. "What you possess is no mere Sacred Tool of the White God. That doesn't do it justice. Rather, what you possess is called Zenith Tempest, and it is one of the Thirteen Longinus."

He froze at those words. He had no idea what the Thirteen Longinus were. That hadn't been something either of his parents had ever mentioned to him before. But Longinus was a name that was well-known even outside of the supernatural world. The name belonged to the Roman centurion that had taken the life of the Christian messiah after his crucifixion. His spear had become synonymous with his name and was even referred to as the Spear of Destiny in countless stories. If what he possessed was in a category called Longinus, then it could only mean that it was dangerous in a way that few others were.

"What she doesn't say is that Zenith Tempest is the second strongest of the Longinus-class Sacred Gears," Rias added a bit hesitantly. "Even among Sacred Gears that can kill gods, that isn't one to be taken lightly. Only the True Longinus exceeds it in power."

Her casual reference to killing gods made Souji shudder. It was one thing to think that he possessed something that could kill nearly anything. But it was another thing altogether to hear that it was, in fact, capable of slaying gods.

"Rias is correct," Sona conceded. For a moment, annoyance flitted across her face. She hadn't forgotten to tell him that detail. Not that he could blame her for omitting it. "If you change your mind about becoming a devil or need assistance in learning to wield Zenith Tempest, feel free to say the word. That particular Sacred Gear has the power to control all forms of weather, along with the natural elements of the world, such as fire, water, ice, lightning, wind, and earth. It's said to be quite difficult to control."

Numbly, Souji nodded his head in understanding. Rias still appeared to be hesitant with him. Knowing that he held such a dangerous weapon clearly made her nervous. Sona, however, couldn't have been more pleased. While she had made the offer, he didn't believe for a moment that she genuinely wanted him to join her peerage. If anything, she was probably thinking more on how much of an asset he could be.

When he had made a pact with Sona after his father's death, he had offered her a marker of sorts. Outside of some very carefully worded restrictions, he was bound to fulfil any single request she made of him. Twenty-four hours ago, that marker wasn't honestly worth much. Now, however, he understood what she had meant when she said that the debt he owed her had become exponentially more valuable. A single request of someone with the power to slay a god… a shiver ran down his spine at the mere thought.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

The days following his meeting with Rias Gremory and Sona Sitri were not the most eventful, though he wouldn't particularly call them good either. Apparently, being the bearer of a weapon that could potentially kill gods made people anxious. Nearly everywhere he went Souji felt eyes upon him. While he couldn't prove it, he was certain that the two devils had assigned subordinates, or perhaps familiars, to watch him.

With a sigh, he climbed the stairs to his apartment. It was only inside that building that he believed that he was safe from prying eyes. Honestly, he understood their hesitation in allowing him to travel freely within their territory unsupervised, but no one wanted to be watched constantly.

Shaking his head, he reached into his pocket and pulled the apartment keys out, only to stop in his tracks. The all too familiar sense of being watched clawed at his instincts. Turning on his heel, Souji's eyes scanned the hallway and stairwell, but there was no one to be seen. And then he heard it.

A soft meow.

Souji flushed as he saw the offender. A cat with fur as dark as midnight padded its way towards him from the stairwell. Its amber eyes roamed the hallway before lingering on him. As it reached him, the cat sat down and cocked its head to the side, giving him a ponderous look.

Slowly, he knelt before the cat and extended a hand. It sniffed his fingers with something resembling haughtiness, but it offered no resistance as he stroked its head and scratched behind one ear. The rumble of a low purr could be heard, and Souji couldn't hide his smile.

Not a trace of magical or demonic power emanated from the cat. With his hand upon its head, he was certain of that.

He rose to his feet, careful not to move too fast. Scaring the cat away was the last thing he wanted. Stepping to the door, he unlocked and opened it before glancing back at that cat. Perhaps he had something in the kitchen he could offer the feline.

Without hesitation, it ran past him into the apartment, earning a soft laugh from Souji. Letting an unfamiliar cat into his apartment probably wasn't the smartest decision, not that he had expected it to dart past him. Still, he didn't particularly mind.

Closing the door behind him, he found the cat looking at him expectantly as if telling him to hurry up and make an offering to his feline overlord.

With a rueful smile, Souji moved past the cat, heading to the kitchen. Not having a pet of his own, proper pet food was out of the question, but that was fine. Something told him that the cat would give him a murderous look if he dared offer dry cat food. So instead, he opened the fridge and looked at his leftovers. Despite eating instant ramen regularly since he began living on his own, he wasn't so crazy as to eat the stuff exclusively. It only took a minute to find the container from a few nights ago. Although stereotypical, he had yet to meet a cat that didn't love fish.

After reheating the piece of fish, he placed the small plate to the side so it could cool down a little. He had no interest in burning the feline's tongue.

But the cat had other plans. It jumped onto the table and made its way to the plate without preamble. Before he could react, it began to eat, taking small, delicate bites from the leftovers and giving him a somewhat approving look between mouthfuls.

He couldn't help but chuckle at the sight. That cat was definitely spoiled.

Leaving the cat to its meal, he made his way to the sofa and sat down. A few days ago, he probably would have turned on the television or opened a book at that point, but instead, he focused his attention on another matter. Ever since learning about Zenith Tempest, he had been trying to learn to control his powers. If the Watchers were willing to send people to spy on him, there was no way he could just sit around and wait for someone else to show up. He needed to be prepared.

His first thought had been to ask Sona for advice on how to control it, but as he should have expected, Sona was unwilling to do such a thing without increasing his debt to her. He already owed her a single favor. The last thing he needed was to owe her two. In the end, it seemed that figuring it out on his own was the best idea.

Souji held a coin in his open hand, his eyes boring into it with an intensity that he normally only gave his textbooks on the nights leading up to a big test. Merely focusing on the object in his hand wasn't enough to do anything though. From what little he had been able to learn about the White God's Sacred Tools, they were directly affected by the desire of their possessors. So, he distanced his mind from the coin, even as he refused to take his eyes off it. He imagined a gentle breeze running along his forearm, a chill nipping at his skin ever so softly. And then he imagined that same breeze flowing up from his wrist and gathering in the palm of his hand, directly beneath the coin.

The process took about thirty seconds, but he was rewarded by the sight of the coin leaping from his hand. After jumping a foot above his hand, the coin fell and landed upon his palm in nearly the same exact spot it had been only a moment before.

Wind was merely one facet of his power if what Sona had told him was true. Even so, the memories of what he had done during the incident in Kyoto were hazy, whereas the memory of blasting Mittelt with his wind was sharp. It was that memory that had allowed him to make his current progress, meager as it was.

The coin leapt from his hand again, but it went just a little higher this time. It was a far cry from the force that he wielded in his brief fight with the fallen angels, but it was an improvement compared to everything since then. Still, he was far from done. As it leapt from his hand for the third time, his concentration faltered. It took everything he had to catch the coin before it could hit the ground, a frown on his face.

Glancing down, he saw that the cat had finished with its meal and decided to jump into his lap. That impact had been what broke his concentration.

"Can I help you?"

In answer, the cat lowered its head and rammed his free hand before giving him an imperious look.

With a shake of his head, he began to absently pet the feline as he returning to his training exercise. The coin leapt into the air over and over again. He wasn't sure how long he sat there practicing, but weariness began to fill his limbs in short order.

"So, is this your apartment now?" he asked the cat as he pocketed the coin, his training forgotten.

There was no answer exactly, but the almost smug look on the cat's face told him everything that he needed to know.

"I suppose you need a name then," he continued without a hint of hesitation. He seemed to consider the matter for a long moment before speaking. "How about Kuro? I used to have a friend with a name like that."

For a moment, he could have sworn that the cat's eyes widened at his words, but after blinking, he saw no such thing.

"How strange," he mused, staring at the cat curiously. There was something odd yet familiar about the feline. "Well, what are we going to do now, Kuro? I really need to get to bed." He wasn't exactly sure what to do about the cat. While he loved cats, he wasn't exactly equipped to deal with them.

Kuro rose and leapt from his lap before glancing back at him, the cat's expression almost asking, "Are you going to sit around, or are you coming?"

Apparently, the cat did not mind the boring name he had bestowed upon it. Though, now that he had given a name, perhaps calling the cat a she made more sense. It was easy to tell that Kuro wasn't a boy, even without trying to expose the cat's belly.

He stood up and followed Kuro to the door, where she stopped and gave him an expectant look. With a small chuckle, he opened the door and she bolted out of the apartment, not even stopping to look at him before she was out of sight.

"She's definitely got an attitude," he remarked as he shut the door and locked it.

Shaking his head, he made his way to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

* * *

The weeks flowed by with a kind of regularity that was comforting. Kuro had become a staple of sorts in his life too. The cat had a talent for finding him. She had even shown up around the shrine frequently. But if Kuro was a change for good in his life, then Rias Gremory was a change for the worse.

The heiress of the Gremory dukedom had been fearful of him initially, but her fear had been tempered as time went by. A week after the incident with the fallen angels, she had taken to approaching him with offers to become a devil- a servant of hers to be precise. While he didn't find the idea of signing up for an eternal life of servitude, he didn't mind being given the offer. It was only after the topic had been brought up or hinted at daily that his patience had reached its limit. Sona, in contrast, had not bothered to make another offer to him since the first time in his apartment. In retrospect, that just proved how much smarter she was than Rias.

About a month after the incident, things finally came to a head for Souji though. He had just stepped out of the shrine when he felt an odd sensation. For a moment, the gaze of a predator flashed through his mind, but he quickly dismissed the notion. What he sensed now was not the gaze of a predator. Rather, it was the feeling that he was not alone. It was even more subtle than the feeling of being watched on his way home from school every day.

A sigh escaped his lips as he focused on his sixth sense. The recent weeks had given him quite a workout when it came to honing his supernatural perception. He was unsurprised to find Kuro lying down next to the shrine's entrance, but she was not what he had felt. After so much time spent around the cat, she wouldn't have had such a reaction on his senses.

A moment later, he thrust his hand at in the distance, feeling the air flow around his forearm. Suddenly, a stream of wind no wider than a bottlecap shot from his palm and drilled into that tree. He choked down on the power of the attack, so it only hit the tree with enough force to shake it fiercely instead of drilling a hole through it.

But it did precisely what he wanted it to. A figure fell out of the tree, easily doing a flip and landing on its feet with a look of muted surprise. Barely a sound was made as a person landed with the grace of a cat.

The figure was a young girl that looked to be no older than twelve with short hair the color of snow. With her prepubescent body and a height that didn't even reach his shoulders, she should have appeared innocent, but he saw the eyes before such an impression could set in his mind. They were amber, like the eyes of an old friend of his, but there was something inherently wrong with them. They were not the eyes of a child. No, they belonged to someone that had been completely and utterly broken. A semblance of emotion flashed through them, but this person had been traumatized on a fundamental level. The last time Souji had seen such a look was when he met a certain freshman at Kuoh Academy.

"You're one of Rias's servants." There was no question in his tone, despite having never seen the girl before.

"I am," the girl confirmed in an almost emotionless tone, but she offered no other information.

"Would you like to tell me what you're doing here?" He would have liked to interject some modicum of patience in his words, but right now, Souji was lacking in that particular area.

"Not particularly."

At that, he resisted the urge to massage his temples. After what he had seen in the girl's eyes, he had no intention of expressing any of his frustration or anger towards her. Instead, he nodded and took a pen knife out of his jacket. An expression resembling curiosity flitted across the girl's face, but she said nothing.

He walked over to a large rock near the trail that ran from the road to the temple. With practiced motions, he scored a circle upon the rock's surface, careful to get the symbols exactly right. And then, he imbued a measure of his will into it. "Rias Gremory, I summon thee."

The circle flared to life, taking on a crimson hue. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could just make out alarm on the girl's face.

"Rias Gremory, daughter of Zeoticus and Venelana, I summon thee," he whispered, causing the circle to glow with even greater intensity.

She was probably going to be annoyed, but this was the last straw as far as he was concerned.

"Rias Gremory, sister of Sirzechs Lucifer, I summon thee. Thrice said and done."

Summoning devils was not technically a difficult thing to do. Devils like Rias and Sona distributed pamphlets to allow clients to summon them to make deals. What he was doing was not even remotely in the same category as that though. Those pamphlets contained simplified magic circles, whereas Souji's was old school. Unlike the simplified ones that merely acted as a beacon that a devil could teleport to if they wished, Souji's circle did not care about the devil's wishes. By naming the devil a total of three times, he could use his own magic power to force the devil to appear. He could have included a containment circle into the design of the summoning circle to keep Rias from being able to leave his circle, but that would have been problematic in the long run. Besides, this would be more fun.

The circle that he had used to summon Rias had been inscribed into a rock, but he had not done so into the top of the rock. Instead, he had done so in the side of the large rock, so when Rias Gremory appeared, there was nothing to stop her from falling face first into the ground.

A brief glance showed him that the girl that had been spying on him was horrified. Oh, and Kuro was staring at him with wide eyes, as if he had just sprouted wings and taken flight.

Rias let out a soft cry of surprise as she hit the ground, though she barely made a sound from the impact itself. Idly, he noted that the girl was wearing her school uniform for some reason. What kind of maniac wore their school uniform on the only day of the week that there were no classes?

"Rias Gremory, would you like to explain what your servant is doing following me?" The words were flat, utterly without emotion, but the distant rumble of thunder shattered any illusion that he was calm. The fact that the clouds above them were growing darker did not go unnoticed if Rias's uneasy glance up was any indication.

Honestly, the whole thing probably seemed impressive. It was just a shame that Souji didn't do any of it on purpose.

With purposeful movement, Rias rose to her feet and met his eyes.

"Please calm down."

His stare became somewhat incredulous at those words. In what universe had those words ever made someone calm down? But he wasn't going to get distracted by that thought.

Instead, he merely said, "That does not sound like an answer to my question."

The grimace on her face caused satisfaction to course through him. "No, I suppose it isn't. You have my apologies Souji." Her eyes shifted from him to the girl for a moment before they returned to him. "Koneko is my Rook, and she will be attending our school in the Spring. I asked her to observe you today."

He hesitated before asking his next question, but it was not a result of anything internal. Rather, he found his attention shift to Kuro for a moment when he heard something that resembled a hiss, but the cat appeared to be sleeping now. Shaking his head, he turned his attention back to Rias.

"And why are you having me watched?" In all fairness, he already had a good idea what her answer would be, but after the last month, he was done being reasonable.

"Because Kuoh Town is my territory. It is within my right to-"

Her words were cut off by thunder of such magnitude that the girl name Koneko had to cover her eyes and appeared to be in visible pain.

"Actually, we are standing inside Sona Sitri's territory right now. I'm pretty sure she said that my apartment is inside her territory too."

Her lips pressed into a thin line at his words, but fire still shone in her eyes.

"I'm also pretty sure that when I moved to this town, there was not a single devil living here, so are you sure you want to go down that path?"

The unwavering determination in her eyes was broken by uncertainty. With the clouds above them black as night and him having carefully practiced using his Sacred Gear where no one could watch him, she was right to be cautious.

"I want to make something clear with you, Rias Gremory." The calm in his voice held a note of sincerity now. "All I want is to be left alone. That means I don't want you and your ilk watching me, and I don't want to ever hear you ask me to join your peerage ago. If you keep pushing me, I will push back. So before you try, ask yourself which of us has more to lose."

Horror flitted across her eyes for the briefest of moments. While he couldn't say what she had just imagined, he personally suspected it was the idea of what he could do to her territory if he allowed Zenith Tempest to run out of control. He didn't know what past wielders had done with it, but having felt the power that lied within him, he knew that it could create a cataclysm the likes of which the world had not seen in centuries.

"Do we have an understanding?" he asked mildly, his eyes as piercing as ever. She had a hard time meeting his gaze now.

"Yes," she answered after a long moment.

And thus, a tentative peace began between Souji and the devils of Kuoh.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

A few days following his encounter with Rias and Koneko, Souji found himself standing before a grave amidst light snowfall. As cold as the flakes felt against his skin, it was nothing compared to the hollowness that resided within him.

The name of Meguri Kojirou had been engraved in the simple stone surface with the words _Beloved Father_ beneath them. Looking at the dates of birth and death, Souji was once again reminded of how young his father had been. Just two months before his fortieth birthday, his illness had finally claimed him.

“I thought I was over it.” His words came out as a whisper, unable to look away from his father’s name. “I was wrong.”

On most days, Souji had been able to put death behind him, but today was not just any other day. It was Christmas, a day that he had spent with his father for as long as he could remember.

“It’s okay to mourn him. Uncle was an amazing man.” Standing next to him, Meguri Tomoe held his hand gently. The normally hyperactive girl had a somber note to her words, and he was once again reminded that he was not the only one that mourned his father’s passing.

“Thank you for coming with me,” he told her in a whisper. Out of the corner of his eye, he could make out a sad smile on his cousin’s face.

“We’re family.” The power behind those two words was undeniable, and he couldn’t help but give her a smile, albeit one tempered by the emotions that gripped him. “You’re more than welcome to come over and spend Christmas with us. No one should have to spend the holidays alone.”

Souji did not say anything at first. The fact that his cousin had been reincarnated as Sona Sitri’s Knight and could have been used to manipulate him was never far from his thoughts, pessimistic as he was. Even so, there was not a single person in town that he trusted as much as Tomoe, despite her nature as a reincarnated devil. So it was with great reluctance that he shook his head. It was not any kind of fear or unease that inspired such a reaction though.

“I appreciate the offer, Tomoe, but I don’t feel much like celebrating today.” Inwardly, he winced, hoping that she did not take offense to the words. She wasn’t just his cousin after all. It would be more accurate to say that she had been his first friend. The first person that he had let his guard down with after being cast out of the Doumon family.

But there was no resentment or judgment. Instead, he felt a pair of slender but strong arms wrap around his form and pull him close. Even if she hadn’t been a devil, he doubted he could have broken free from her grip, but he had no desire to even try. Instead, he awkwardly returned the hug as best as he could.

“We’ll always be here for you. Take as long as you need.”

He didn’t say anything to that, merely meeting her gaze as they broke apart and giving her a resolute nod.

She returned his nod after a moment of silence, apparently satisfied with the unspoken promise. “Do you want some help getting back to your apartment?” As she spoke, she glanced up at the falling snow.

He turned his back to the grave and laughed softly at that. “What would Sona say if she knew you were offering your services without asking for anything in return?”

A smile graced her face at that, a hint of mischief dancing in her eyes. “Who’s to say that this isn’t all a clever ploy to make you owe me one?”

Another laugh escaped him at that, a warmth flowing through him that made his earlier thoughts a little more bearable. “Well, I’m afraid I’ll have to turn down your offer. A little weather isn’t going to stop me.”

“Oh, really?” There was a hint of challenge behind her words, as if daring him to prove it.

While he wouldn’t have called himself a prideful individual, Souji couldn’t resist the chance to show off. He so rarely had a chance to banter with someone like this. So, he tilted his chin up and focused his gaze upon a single spot above his head. After nearly a minute of concentration, the snowflakes no longer fell upon Souji. In fact, not a single snowflake fell within five meters of him.

He lowered his gaze and met the eyes of a shocked Tomoe, her mouth agape at what he had done.

Using the wind manipulation of Zenith Tempest, Souji had solidified the air directly above him, essentially creating a translucent umbrella. Technically, he could have used his limited knowledge of the Doumon clan’s water magic to stay dry, but this seemed a little more impressive as far as he was concerned.

Still, Souji was not particularly impressed with his performance, even as Tomoe stood there slack jawed. It had taken entirely too long to create the disk, and he had to maintain a certain degree of concentration to keep it from breaking apart.

Over a month had passed since he broke the seal that bound Zenith Tempest, and he was still only capable of controlling the element of air with it. To make matters worse, he was nowhere near mastering that element. It wasn’t as if the metaphysical weapon came with an instruction booklet, he mused.

After a little more talking, the pair parted. Tomoe had created a magic circle beneath her feet that bore the symbol of House Sitri and teleported home, while Souji had given a farewell to his father’s grave before walking back to the apartment.

Even with his disk of air to keep the snow off him, Souji was unbearably cold by the time he reached the small apartment. He wasn’t entirely dry either. Snow might not have been able to fall onto him directly, the wind could still carry it to him from below the disk.

The rest of the day passed without incident, but he never would have imagined what that night would entail.

* * *

Souji woke to a weight against his chest. That wasn’t so unusual though. Kuro occasionally refused to leave the apartment until the morning, and he had woken more than once with the cat sleeping on his chest. Even in his half-awake state, he could recognize that there was something unusual about the sensation this time though. The weight on his chest was far heavier than the lithe cat.

Blinking the exhaustion away, he saw a head of raven black hair resting against his bare chest and felt warm breath against his skin every now and then. That wasn’t the only unusual sensation he felt though. Something, - no, make that two somethings- pressed against him near his waist softly. It was only when he raised his head a little and looked past the head of hair that panic began to fill him. The milky white skin of an utterly naked back filled his vision. His gaze lingered on the best ass he had ever laid eyes upon. It took everything he had in him to look away from the magnificent sight. Even only barely able to see past her head, he could clearly see that she wasn’t wearing a stich of clothing.

Panic began to creep within him, but Souji fought to keep it contained. Acting rashly wouldn’t help him now. Besides, if the clearly feminine figure that slept atop him in the nude had been intending to cause him harm, he never would have woken up. A metaphysical weapon bound to your soul with the power to slay gods didn’t make him any less dead if his throat was cut in his sleep.

The first thing that Souji did after regaining a measure of his calm was to stretch out his sixth sense and see if he could tell anything by the woman’s aura. What he found brought him up short. He couldn’t even sense her presence with his detection abilities. As far as they were concerned, he was alone. That, more than anything, terrified him.

“Oh my. Are you happy to see me or something?”

The voice had a clear femininity to it, but there was more to it. It sounded casual with an almost sing-song quality to it, and yet he could almost detect a sultry quality to it.

Looking at the woman’s face, his face went slaw jaw. A pair of amber eyes with cat-like pupils were starting at him with an almost giddy excitement to them. She had barely lifted her head from his chest, but her chin rested against his sternum casually.

But it wasn’t her face that his attention was on. Rather, it was her words, or the truth of her words. Unbidden, he was pressing into the unknown women. His body had reacted to the fact that there was a naked woman pressed against him, and they were both now aware of the hardness under her abdomen.

Mortification filled him for a moment before he realized that now wasn’t the time to be thinking about such things. His main concern at present was a simple question.

“What are you doing here?” He spoke in a low tone, a hint of warning echoing in it.

The woman sighed at the question as she slowly rose. His focus broke as her naked breasts came into view, the motion causing them to bounce enough that he couldn’t look away. Exactly how gifted she was in that department wasn’t clear. Souji wasn’t popular with girls, and he had certainly never found himself in a position to see a naked girl in person. Even so, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she were more well-endowed than his classmates.

“Don’t get too lost in thought.” The teasing tone broke him from his thoughts, and Souji realized that while he had been thinking about the sight, she had partially gotten dressed and moved away from him. She wore a loose black kimono, though she had not entirely closed it, so while her body wasn’t exactly bare any longer, her cleavage and stomach were still exposed.

“Right,” he muttered a bit hesitantly. “Are you going to answer the question?”

She tapped a finger against her lips at the question, appearing to grow deep in thought. As her eyes moved to meet his, her gaze took on a sultry quality. “And what if I’m here to have my wicked way with you?”

His only answer was a sharp glare, earning a musical laugh.

“Oh fine. The reason I’m here is because you keep letting me in. You are the one that lets me sleep in your bed.”

He frowned at that, confusion filling him. “What are you talking about? I’ve never invited anyone to sleep in my bed.”

Something resembling hurt flashed across her face. “How could you say that after so many nights of petting the pussy?”

Before he even registered what she had said, Souji’s had already flushed, unsure how to respond to that. But then something dawned on him. “Wait… are you saying that you are Kuro?”

A glint of amusement danced in her amber eyes. “You aren’t too slow after all,” she teased, licking her lips with an expression that unnerved him more than he would have expected. “The name is Kuroka, so you weren’t far off.”

Something about that name sent a shiver down his spine, but he couldn’t quite place where he had heard it before. Still, if she was talking the truth about her being the cat he had known as Kuro, then that meant that he had been allowing a strange girl into his apartment.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” she told him with a look of amusement. “Unless that’s what you’re into, I suppose.”

Again, he flushed, having not expected another teasing remark. But rather than say anything about it, he merely gave her a piercing look.

With another sigh, she backed off on the teasing, and he could have sworn he saw something resembling disappointment in her eyes. A moment later, there was nothing there, and so he dismissed the idea that there had been anything there to begin with.

Her teasing aside, he believed that she was telling the truth. It matched up with his own thoughts about how she could have easily killed him if she had wanted to. And as much as he hated to admit it, her being Kuro did make sense. Kuro had demonstrated an uncanny ability to evade his sixth sense, and this woman seemed to have the same ability.

“Why have you been following me?” he asked, his voice uncharacteristically rough. The last thing he needed was for any of his uncertainty to be reflected in it.

Kuro, or rather Kuroka as she had introduced herself, appeared amused by the question. “Why ask questions you already know the answer to?” The playfulness in her voice seemed forced at those words.

Souji stared at her for a long moment before nodding his head. There was more to it. Her reaction made it clear that there was something else, but he was not quite irritated enough to force her to talk about something that pained her.

“Zenith Tempest,” he said, barely containing a sigh. “Like everyone else that’s spied on me in the last month and a half, you’re interested in Zenith Tempest.”

Kuroka laughed softly at that. “Don’t look so angsty. It doesn’t suit you. I’m not like Gremory or those crows anyways. I didn’t come to recruit or test you.”

He froze at those words. “Test me?”

She tilted her head to the side in a very cat-like gesture. “Eh, I’m just guessing really. Azazel’s obsessed with Sacred Gears from what I hear. I doubt his underlings would fight you head on unless there was something else going on. I can’t say for sure though. I wasn’t in town when that happened. I just heard Gremory and Sitri talking about it one day.”

“Your eavesdropping aside,” Souji began, shaking his head at how casually the woman admitted it. “If you aren’t hear to recruit me or test me, then what is your intention?”

Kuroka actually looked uncomfortable at that question, but she met his eyes and answered all the same. “To see if I needed to kill you.”

Souji froze at the words but only for a moment. “Since I’m still alive, I’m assuming you decided not to?”

“For now,” Kuroka said with a thin smile, and he did not doubt for one moment that she would go through with it if that changed.

“And why would you need to kill me?”

Something flickered in her amber eyes, but it was gone before he could figure out what the emotion was. “A girl has to keep some things a mystery, doesn’t she?”

“Right,” Souji muttered, more than a hint of disbelief audible in his tone. “Well if I get too close to crossing that line, I’d appreciate a warning before you rip my heart out.”

A genuine laugh rang out, Kuroka unable to contain her amusement. “Fair enough, but it sounds like you’ve accepted me being around. Are you trying to say you’ll miss me if I leave?” The innocent expression on her face was perfect. Too perfect. And yet, he still felt a pang in his chest at the sight.

He just shook his head. By all rights, he should have wanted nothing to do with Kuroka, but there was something about her that called to some part of him. He just couldn’t quite explain it. Even so, he wasn’t about to say that to her. Instead, he said, “Well, if you aren’t sure if you’re going to kill me yet, I assume that means you’re going to hang around here until you’re sure one way or the other.”

The smile she gave him didn’t reach her eyes. “You’re not wrong.” She bit her lip, her brow furrowed for a moment. And then resolved shone in the pools of amber. “What do you say I help you?” The earlier mischief was missing. Even her posture had become more rigid.

“And what exactly does that mean?”

There was no smile or laugh in response. Instead, Kuroka merely said, “Why don’t I help you learn to control Zenith Tempest?”

Souji faltered. Of everything she could have said, that was perhaps the last thing he could have predicted. But why would she offer to help him? She was apparently trying to figure out if he needed to be killed after all. What kind of sense did that even make? After a few seconds, he voiced that particular concern aloud.

This time, Kuroka did laugh, even if it rang hollow. An inner conflict seemed to be waging war behind her eyes. Still, she spoke with a lighthearted tone. “What difference would it make? It’s not like you’d be able to stop me even if you mastered it.”

A weight settled in the stomach at her words. He knew in that moment that she spoke nothing but the truth. “In that case, I’ll accept.”

A little of the earlier light returned to her eyes as a grin crept across her face. “Then we can get started in the morning. For now, let’s go back to bed.”

He raised a hand to forestall her movement towards the head. “I’m going to bed. You can sleep on the couch in the living room.”

The crestfallen expression did little to dampen his resolved, and after a long moment, she grumbled and left the room with mutters about spoilsports.

Once the door closed behind her, a weariness that had nothing to do with exhaustion came over him. After the day that he had, this was the last thing he wanted to deal with, but Souji knew that complaining about it wouldn’t change anything. The only thing he could do was face matters head on and try to figure out why Kuroka was really hanging around him.

Still, perhaps accepting her offer to help him learn to control Zenith Tempest would be a change for the better. With that in mind, he tried to get some more sleep, but it wouldn’t come.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

Souji slammed into the tree with a thunderous crash, but there was no scream or grunt of pain. That would have required him to have air in his lungs to manage. Exactly what kind of damage that hit had done to him, he couldn't say. With his vision blurry and his entire body throbbing like a single mass of pain, the only thing he could say for sure was that he was alive.

His training with Kuroka had just begun, and things were not going the way he expected. The person he had formerly known as his feline companion had taken him to the woods near the shrine and had immediately taken to tormenting him. The tight tracksuit that she had obtained from somewhere only added to that torment.

Suddenly, the pain began to fade and his vision started to clear. The sight of amber eyes centimeters away from his own and soft lips pressed against his made him freeze, but she pulled away after mere seconds. The taste of strawberries lingered.

He blinked a few times as he realized that he was no longer in any pain. Even his stamina seemed to have recovered in full.

An amused looking Kuroka just stood before him with her arms crossed beneath her breasts. "Ready for round two?"

A part of him wanted to shout that if every round ended that way, he'd be more than happy, but he quickly stamped down that part of him. Instead, he asked, "How exactly is beating the shit out of me going to help me learn to use Zenith Tempest?"

Her musical laugh from the previous night was back in full force. "We're working on your stamina and combat experience at once. Vali said stamina's a big part of Sacred Gear combat. Something about how they can use stamina or magical power at fuel."

As much as he wondered who this Vali was, he decided to put that topic off. Instead, he nodded slowly. He had experienced a drop in his stamina while using Zenith Tempest before, but it was mostly his magical power that seemed to be used up by it.

Slowly, he rose to his feet and adopted something of a fighting stance. He needn't have bothered.

Kuroka was standing next to him in the blink of an eye and swatted his shoulder. Her hand didn't move more than a few inches, but that was all she needed to do. The sheer force behind that small strike sent him flying as if he had been hit by an automobile. Pain shot through his left arm, and he was pretty sure she had broken it.

With a grimace, he drew upon Zenith Tempest and extended his right hand to the quickly approaching ground. A blast of wind struck it, slowing his fall, but it didn't stop him from hitting it hard. Thankfully, he landed on his unbroken arm. Unfortunately, he rolled when he landed, and the pain in the other arm grew even more intense.

As quickly as he could, Souji rose to his feet, only to freeze as Kuroka met his eyes. She stood within an arm's reach of him. Her posture was as relaxed as it could be, but he had already realized that she could move far faster than his eyes could track her.

It was almost as if she could hear his thoughts, as something resembling a smirk flitted across her face. And then he was sent flying back from an unseen impact against his sternum. He tried to reach out and use Zenith Tempest against her, but it didn't work. Extending an arm forward after being sent flying back was easier said than done. So instead, he focused on the sensation of wind and pushed backwards. His flight slowed until he came to a stop, landing on his feet, but judging by the intense pain spread out across his back, stopping his momentum had come at a cost.

Kuroka had not moved after her last attack, and she actually looked a little impressed. The small smile she gave him didn't offer much reassurance though. And then before his eyes, she disappeared once again.

Without hesitation, he started to look around, trying to see where she had gone to. But before he could spot her, he felt it. A gentle hand ran up his broken arm, and another ran up his spin. Other than a slight sting with the barest pressure, he felt no pain. In fact, his arm was no longer broken.

"Mind telling me how you're doing that?" Not a trace of annoyance made it to his words. To say her healing abilities were impressive was an understatement.

"Do you mean the beating the shit out of you or the healing you part?" Kuroka asked from behind him. The lower, sultry tone made him shudder, despite the actual words.

"I'm curious about the former, but I'm asking about the healing."

The fact that she continued her ministrations against his arm and spine made it difficult to keep his voice even.

"The answer to both is senjutsu. I can manipulate ki. By manipulating my ki, I can go unnoticed, even people that are normally perceptive. It's why you can't sense my power even now. I can also use it to amplify my physical abilities. My ki isn't all that I can manipulate though. By manipulating yours, I can mend your injuries in an instant."

There was no way she missed the gasp that escaped his lips as the realization hit him. The implications of what she could do were simply astounding. And terrifying. Ki was a person's life force. If she could manipulate it with a touch, then she could no doubt kill him without moving a muscle. Still, there did leave him with another question.

"Last time, you healed me with a kiss, but this time, it took only a touch. What's the difference?"

He could just imagine the coy smile she was no doubt giving him. "Oh? Are you disappointed I didn't kiss you again? Just say the word and I'll take that approach every time."

Unbidden thoughts overcame him for a moment, remembering the taste of her lips against his and wondering how it would feel to have her body pressed against his at the same time.

Instead, he carefully said, "What's the difference between the way you healed me then and now?"

"You were more seriously injured the last time. With a broken arm and tender skin, it's easy to use a small measure of my Ki to stimulate yours. With a broken back, I had to use more of my Ki than I could manage with my hand. If you were injured too badly, we'd need an even more solid connection for me to provide enough Ki to help you."

He stiffened at the end, even more intimate thoughts filling his mind.

"They call that the bedroom method," she added after a moment, and he was certain she had a wicked grin plastered on her face. "Hopefully, you won't get injured badly enough to require such extreme measures. After kicking me out of your bed, that would be a little awkward."

* * *

After about four hours of being knocked around like a ragdoll and being healed by Kuroka, the initial part of the day's training came to an end. It was not all bad though. More than a few times, it had taken a meeting of their lips to mend his injuries. He wasn't about to admit to Kuroka that he enjoyed that. His pride was a little too much for that.

Now, the pair were resting before the next part of the training would begin. To say that Souji felt a bit uneasy would have been an understatement to say the least.

While he was drinking from a water bottle and eyeing Kuroka wearily, she spoke up curiously. "How do you use Zenith Tempest?"

He didn't immediately answer, instead continuing to drink from the bottle. While she didn't say it directly, he was pretty sure she was specifically asking about the mental process of activating the Sacred Gear. And so he explained to her the process, describing in detail how he remembered the feel of the wind flowing around him and directing it with his will.

When he saw the grin, Souji couldn't help but feel that he had just made a grave mistake. Instead, he tried to distract her. "I'm surprised we haven't been bothered out here. I know Sona and Rias can sense when I use Zenith Tempest in town."

Kuroka's grin grew at those words. "You'd be right under normal circumstances, but with the barrier I put around this place, that's impossible."

He shifted at that, surprise no doubt flashing across his face. "A barrier?"

She nodded, a pleased look replacing the grin. "It's a combination of senjutsu and youjutsu. Anyone outside the barrier can't sense anything that's happening inside it. It can even fool hearing and sight."

In other words, if she did want to kill him, there was no way help would arrive as long as the barrier was up. Though after the last four hours, he was pretty sure that Kuroka could kill him even with Rias and Sona present.

Still, there was something else that she said that earned his attention. Specifically, it was the mention of youjutsu. Youjutsu was, quite simply put, the magic unique to youkai. He had suspected that she wasn't human, but it wasn't until that moment that he was certain. Still, he held his tongue on the questions that revelation warranted.

"What element would you like to learn to use next?" The sudden question broke him from his reverie. When he met her gaze, Souji felt a weight settle in his stomach. There was a predatory look on her face.

Exactly what she was planning, he couldn't even begin to guess, but he had a feeling that no matter what he answered with, things were not going to go well for him. So, he decided to answer honestly.

"How about lightning?" Out of the elements that Zenith Tempest could weaponize, it held the most appeal for him. Wind was useful, of course, and with his Eastern magic, he could use manipulate water fairly well, so that just left earth, ice, fire, and lightning as far as he was concerned.

If anything, that answer seemed to please Kuroka beyond anything he had said or done all day.

"Then let's get started," she said, extending the fingers of her right hand. Electricity began to arc between her fingers, and Souji bit back the urge to run. "If the memory of wind against your skin if the trigger you use to control wind, then the same should be true of lightning."

"Fuck my life," Souji muttered, rising to his feet. Though he now suspected that lightning wasn't the worst choice he could have said. Fire or ice probably would have warranted her lobbing fireballs at him or freezing him solid.

He had no time to think on the matter, however, as she pointed at him and sent lightning arcing forward.

* * *

If the past eight hours were any indication, Souji resolved never to make an enemy of Kuroka. When he had first realized that the cat that he had taken care of was a woman capable of hiding her presence and transforming into an animal, he had accepted that she could have killed him in his sleep. Now, he knew that sleep wasn't necessary for him to kill him.

In the first portion of her training, she had demonstrated her inhuman physical prowess and left him with no doubt that she could have dismembered him with her bare hands. But it was the second portion that had really demonstrated the danger she possessed. Every element that his Sacred Gear could wield was well within her powers to use, and she was no novice at harnessing elemental magic. It was only after witnessing her powers that he was inclined to agree with her. Him mastering Zenith Tempest wouldn't have stopped her from killing him.

Still, he couldn't deny that she knew what she was doing. In a mere two hours, Kuroka had helped him learn to use lightning, fire, water, ice, and earth with Zenith Tempest. He wasn't particularly skilled at using them yet, but her sole focus seemed to be helping him break through his blocks on those elements.

Unfortunately, he had been right in how she planned on teaching him to use the various elements. For four hours, he had become intimately familiar with being electrocuted, burned, drenched, frozen, and buried to the neck. And to make matters worse, she had insisted on doing each repeatedly until she was sure the memories would forever be burned into his mind.

The next two hours had been spent sparring with Kuroka in nothing but elemental combat. He had thought that a rule forbidding physical contact between the two would have given him an edge, but that was before he realized that she specialized in magical combat.

With a grimace, he lifted a hand and focused. Zenith Tempest responded to his will and a wall of earth rose before him. It was only a few meters wide and just a little taller than him, but that did little to stop the beads of sweat from rolling down his face. Earth had proven to be the hardest of the elements for him to manipulate.

Even so, he was forced to roll out of the way as lightning arced around the wall and shot straight at him. It was not the first time Kuroka had displayed the ability to manipulate the trajectory of her magic even after releasing it. The crack of lightning striking a tree behind where he had been standing echoed throughout the area, but he gave it little thought.

Instead, he pointed and sent several bolts of lightning in quick succession at her, the speed of each rivaling gunfire. Even so, she lazily made a gesture with one hand, and rocks shot from the ground, meeting his lightning bolts just a few meters away from her position. She just gave him a wide grin after his attack was countered.

That grin promised pain, and he was already moving. Souji threw himself to the side, narrowly dodging a rock the size of a small car that had come from behind him. He was starting to get a feel for surprised attacks- perhaps an intended side effect from the first portion of his training.

What Kuroka did next, however, was worse than any kind of surprise attack. The massive rock flew straight at her, and she delivered an open palm strike to it, her grin never faltering. With that single hit, it broke apart into hundreds of pieces, each about the size of a baseball. Those rocks made no hint of falling either. With a gesture, she sent them all flying straight at Souji.

He didn't have much time to think on how he was going to defend against the massive barrage of stone headed his way, but that was fine. He had started moving on instinct, drawing upon Zenith Tempest.

The disc of compressed air that he had shown off to Tomoe only a day before had barely been capable of holding back rainfall, but Sacred Gears responded to their wielders' desires. More than anything, Souji didn't want to die, and Zenith Tempest responded. The disc of compressed air that he formed in front of him was at least six meters across and sliced through the earth below it as if it was butter. Instinctively, he knew that it was about half a meter thick.

When the rocks struck the disc, it sounded like thunder. The sound of thunder roaring at least two hundred times in a matter of seconds was an experience Souji hoped never to hear again. But as grating as the sound was, it was not the most pressing thing on his mind. As powerful as his defense was, the rocks were moving fast enough to damage the disc of compressed air, so he had to focus his attention on holding it together and repairing it. Simply keeping up with the rate of damage pushed him to his limits.

After several long seconds, Kuroka's attack had been stopped and Souji collapsed to one knee, his defense falling apart.

"You know, you could have just opened up a hole underneath you and they would have missed."

Souji slowly looked up and found a very amused Kuroka staring at him. The worst part was that she was right. With his newfound ability to manipulate earth, he could have easily opened a hole big enough to dodge the entire barrage. Instead, he had faced it head on.

"Still, that was pretty impressive. I didn't think you could block that. I should probably go a little more seriously tomorrow."

Dread filled him at those words. "Are you saying you were holding back?"

Kuroka just laughed, unable to contain herself. "Don't tell me you thought I was actually fighting seriously. You wouldn't have lasted five seconds if I was serious."

He should have at least entertained the notion that she was making empty boasts, but as he met her eyes, Souji knew the truth. There was nothing exaggerated about her claims. She could and would crush him in the blink of an eye if she ever took him seriously.

One question came to mind. He wasn't sure if she would answer it, but some part of him had to ask regardless. "How strong are you?"

Kuroka tilted her head, her eyes growing distant. When she finally spoke, she seemed a little uncertain, but it was a carefree kind of uncertainty. "I'm not really sure. I don't get into fights very often, but I've killed a few Ultimate-class devils before."

Souji could only look at her dumbly as the implications hit him. Ultimate-class was a familiar ranking among nearly every faction. Not everyone with that ranking was equal in strength, but the power to wipe out an entire city was practically a prerequisite to be called Ultimate-class.

"So what are we having for dinner?" Kuroka asked, seemingly oblivious to his inner thoughts. "You'll need your energy for tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" he asked a bit weakly, broken from his thoughts.

"Sure. You're on Winter Break, aren't you? We should be able to squeeze in a week and a half of training before you have to return."

Eleven more days of what he had just been put through… if he had the strength, he would have turned and fled in the opposite direction. Though, he suspected Kuroka would have dragged him back with a cheery smile and made teasing comments about playing hard to get.

"We should get take out," he muttered at last, too exhausted to cook or argue with her. On the bright side, if he somehow survived his Winter Break without dying or being crippled beyond Kuroka's ability to heal him, he was bound to come out of it stronger. He just wasn't sure how likely he was to survive the experience.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

Twelve days of training under Kuroka was more than Souji would have wished on his worst enemy. As it turned out, that first day had been an anomaly. Apparently, Kuroka had been taking it easy on him. Considering that he would have been permanently crippled without her healing, that said a great deal.

Still, he couldn’t deny that training with the mysterious youkai had been effective. In a single day, her training had done more for him than his independent training had done in a month and a half. All in all, he guessed that it would have taken two or three years of independent training to get to where he was now.

Even so, one thing had not changed even after nearly two weeks of training. Kuroka was still on a completely different level than he was. In fact, he hadn’t put so much as a scratch on her.

Their training had ended for the day nearly an hour ago, and Souji was preparing dinner for the two of them. She may have accepted takeout that first day, but she practically demanded that he cook her something following that night as thanks for training him. Kuroka had been a little weird about it, but he didn’t put up a fight.

Just as he was about to put the spatula down, two slender arms wrapped around him and a familiar softness pressed against his back. It never ceased to amaze him how effortlessly she could sneak up on him, even after all their time together.

“Do you need something, Kuroka?” He didn’t offer her any acknowledgement other than the question, but he didn’t pull away either.

“You’re no fun,” she muttered, but it lacked any real heat. Slowly, she released him before she spoke. Any trace of teasing was gone. “After dinner, we need to talk. Now that your training is done for now, there are some things that you deserve to know.”

Before he could say a word, he saw her taking a seat on the couch. Something resembling anxiety flitted across her face until she noticed his gaze. There was something odd going on.

He sighed. As much as he wanted to get answers now, he knew that Kuroka wouldn’t say a word until she was ready. For someone that enjoyed few things more than teasing, she knew how to keep her mouth shut. Instead of broaching the topic further, he continued cooking and reflected a little more on his training.

To call his training with Kuroka brutal was an understatement. By six o’clock each morning, she had him running to build stamina. They had started at ten kilometers the second day, and by the eleventh, she had him running twice that. After that, they had a repeat of the first day’s initial training exercise. She might have called it _sparring_ , but that wasn’t what it was. Sparring implied something resembling a fair fight. Instead, he spent hours trying to dodge Kuroka’s attacks or enduring bone shattering physical trauma.

She had been kind enough to give him a thirty-minute lunch break after that. Officially, it was the highlight of his day. Unofficially, the touches and occasional kisses that Kuroka used to heal him were.

After that lunch break, she had continued to work with him on using Zenith Tempest in new ways, followed by sparring with their elemental powers. The number of near-death experiences during just that last portion of training had simply been staggering.

He was broken out of his thoughts when he noticed that the chicken was done.

The pair ate in silence, something that he wouldn’t have believed possible just the other day. Kuroka had never been fond of silence in general. The entire time, he couldn’t help but wonder what exactly she wanted to tell him. Whatever it was, it had to be major with the amount of tension in the air.

It was only after the dishes were cleaned and he took his seat at the table that Kuroka finally spoke. “I didn’t come to Kuoh because of you.”

She seemed to flinch as she realized what she said, but Souji simply looked at her curiously.

“That’s an odd way to start this conversation.” When he had asked before, Kuroka had said that she was there because of him and having to decide if she needed to kill him. He couldn’t imagine that she had lied at that time, so he opted to ask the simple question. “Why did you come to Kuoh then?”

Her lips pressed into a thin line and her eyes became distant. Just when he was about to give up on receiving an answer, she said, “I came to Kuoh to see my sister on her birthday.”

He could only blink in surprise at the admission. Kuroka had a sister? As far as he knew, she never spent time with anyone other than him.

She continued before he had a chance to say anything. “I didn’t let her know I was in town. I just wanted to check on her from a distance. And then I sensed you. The aura of a Longinus is distinctive, and the fact that you were still human made me uneasy, so I decided to watch you.”

The pieces weren’t hard to put together. “You wanted to know if I was a danger to your sister and that’s why you were trying to decide if you needed to kill me.”

Kuroka nodded but refused to meet his eyes.

“And I should care why?”

She stiffened for a moment, only to turn an incredulous look upon him, though her eyes never rose above his chest.

“I don’t care why you were in Kuoh, and I can respect that you considered killing me to protect your sister. I just don’t understand why you felt that I deserved to know about this.”

Her features softened and she placed her hands on the table, palm down. “There’s more.”

Before his eyes, Kuroka changed. It wasn’t a radical change, but it was still near impossible to miss. A pair of black furry ears rose from the top of her head, her pupils had elongated and were not shaped like slits, and two black feline tails swayed slowly behind her.

Seeing her true form as a youkai was not inherently shocking for him, but she wasn’t done. She lifted her eyes to meet his at last, and Kuroka seemed to flicker. One moment, she was sitting at the table exactly as she was, and the next, he saw an all too familiar girl. The eyes, the hair ornament, and the color of her hair and feline features were perfect. The two continued to flicker for several moments, only to stop on the woman.

A flash of memory struck him.

“Are you okay?”

He was standing before a girl of eight or nine years with raven hair that fell just below her shoulders and was framed by a familiar hair ornament. Her amber eyes had a glossy sheen to them.

“Yes,” she said, her voice soft and hesitant. Fear tinged the single word. “I got lost and I can’t find my mom.”

“I can help,” the memory of him said, offering a hand to her. “We can find her together.”

Slowly, the girl reached out, but she stopped before taking his hand. “I’m Kuroka,” she whispered, trailing off at the end.

“Nice to meet you, Kuro. I’m Doumon Souji.”

And just like that, the memory was done, and he closed his eyes. He had been seven years old, and they hadn’t spent much time together before his parents were able to help reunite her with her mother. Even so, he should have made the connection much sooner.

He now knew why Kuroka had never shown her youkai features to him. While she had concealed them when they met ten years ago, she had shown them to him before they parted ways.

After a long moment, he opened his eyes and met Kuroka’s gaze. “You know, I don’t think I ever realized your name was Kuroka. It just sounded like Kuro when you introduced yourself back then.”

Kuroka laughed, but it came out weaker than normal. Souji understood why.

“It’s weighed heavily on you, hasn’t it?” he asked, but they both already knew the answer. “Having to look at someone that you knew and try to decide if you needed to kill them, I mean.”

“There was more than just knowing you,” she stated, her voice softer than normal. “You treated me with kindness when I was lost and did your best to keep me from feeling down that day.”

“And you’d kill me in a heartbeat if it kept Shirone safe.” Contrary to his words, Souji smiled as he looked into her eyes. “And I don’t think I’d blame you if you did it either.”

Surprise shone in her eyes. “You remember her name. But I mentioned her one time to you ten years ago.”

“Once was all that was necessary.”

She flushed at his words and turned her gaze to the floor.

“Thank you for finally telling me the truth,” he continued when he saw that she wasn’t going to say anything further for now. “I assume that you telling me this means you’re sure I won’t harm your sister. Not that I could since I don’t even know who she is.”

She nodded slowly before stopping. Again, she could only stare at him dumbfounded. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?” he asked a bit hesitantly.

“My sister is the one Gremory had tailing you a few weeks ago.”

It took all his considerable willpower not to snort at the pun, but then it hit him. “Wait, Koneko-”

Pressure filled the room, and Souji saw fury in her eyes, leading him to shut his mouth before speaking another word.

“Do not call her by that name.” There was no anger in the words, despite the look in her eyes. Rather, they were spoken with an icy calm that had his instincts screaming at him to put as much distance between them as he could. Her eyes softened after a moment, and she continued, “Why Gremory replaced my sister’s name with such a mockery is beyond me, but I don’t want to hear it used even by you. She is Shirone, and she will always be Shirone. She isn’t a pet.”

Understanding dawned, and he nodded in understanding. He supposed he would have been upset as well if someone had started calling his hypothetical sister by a name that meant kitten.

“The white-haired girl that looks like she’s ten years old is Shirone?” Souji asked after a moment of silence, careful to avoid the forbidden name.

A soft snort escaped Kuroka at his words. “Yes, though she is actually fifteen years old now. We were separated a few years ago, which is why I wanted to check on her but couldn’t risk speaking with her directly. I’d rather not get into the story, but there are some details you should know. I’m a wanted criminal in the eyes of the Underworld, and my sister was given over to Gremory by the current Lucifer.”

A question blossomed, but Souji did not give voice to it. The fact that she was still concealing her aura using senjutsu did not escape his notice. Still, if she didn’t want to discuss the matter right now, he would have been an ass to bring it up.

“So, what do you plan to do from here?”

Apparently, Kuroka had not been expecting that question.

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked when she seemed unsure what to say. That earned him a glare, but it was half-hearted at best.

“I don’t know.” The admission seemed to cost her something, and again, she refused to meet his eyes. I don’t usually stay in one place for long, and since I’ve been keeping things from you, I’d understand if you wanted me to leave.”

“You can leave,” Souji allowed, but he continued before Kuroka could react. “Or you can continue to stay here as long as you follow some basic rules. I don’t care if you keep things from me. You don’t owe my anything as far as I’m concerned. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t lie to me, but keeping secrets is a different matter entirely.”

Some of the tension left her body and she opened her mouth to speak, but again, he interrupted her.

“If you want to live here, you can sleep on the couch. If you ignore that and insist on sleeping in my room, you have to stay in cat form. Things are complicated enough without me waking to find a beautiful woman in my bed.”

The look she gave him was practically predatory. “Oh my. Did you just call me a beautiful woman?”

“No, I was talking to my other guest,” he said, gesturing towards the empty chair and rolling his eyes. “Second, don’t get caught outside of my apartment. If you’re really as wanted as you indicated, the last thing I need is Rias or Sona asking me uncomfortable questions. Three, if time permits, I’d like for some more help with training. As long as you’re willing to abide by those conditions, I’m willing to let you stay here, and I’ll even feed you.”

Kuroka did not have to consider it for long. Almost immediately, she nodded her head and accepted the conditions.

Uncertainty could still be seen in her eyes even after that was worked out. He didn’t understand why until she spoke. “It’s already been a heavy conversation, but there is something else I want to say. I don’t know what happened, but I do know that you aren’t using the same surname that you had ten years ago.”

He froze at her words before meeting her gaze. Understanding flashed across his mind after a moment. He had introduced himself to her as a Doumon when they first met, and it wouldn’t have been difficult for her to hear him called Meguri with her abilities.

“If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here for you.” The uncertainty in her voice was almost tangible, but she gave him a sympathetic look all the same.”

He merely nodded, unable to say a word. Nothing further was discussed between them that night. The subject of his family’s situation was not something he could bring himself to talk about just yet.

* * *

Rias was no stranger to power. Her brother didn’t become the current Lucifer by collecting bottlecaps, and her sister-in-law was widely known to be the second strongest female devil in the Underworld and held the title of _Strongest Queen_. Considering Tannin, the Blaze Meteor Dragon and a former Dragon King, was also a Queen, that title was far from empty.

As used to power as she was, Rias couldn’t say that she had ever feared someone because of it. That was no longer true. Perhaps it had ceased to be true from the moment that she had learned that one of her classmates possessed a Longinus, but there was no doubt about it now.

It was the first day of the new semester at Kuoh Academy, and for the first time since Christmas, Rias had seen Meguri Souji. Physically, he didn’t really look any different than before. Perhaps he had greater muscle definition than before, but it wasn’t that noticeable.

What was noticeable, however, was the aura of power that radiated off him. Ever since the encounter with the fallen angels, his aura had been like a lighthouse, even when he wasn’t consciously using it.

Now, however, it was like the sun. Just being near him made her uneasy, and she handled it far better than the rest of her peerage did. Yuuto did his best never to come within a hundred meters of Souji, and even Akeno preferred to keep her distance from him.

Still, it wasn’t a surprise to her that Souji had been training over the winter break. He might have tried to hide it, but unnatural fluctuations in the weather near his family’s shrine outside of Kuoh weren’t so easy to ignore.

“Are you going to make a move at some point?” Sona asked, a hint of exasperation in her voice.

Rias blinked for a few times and realized that she had gotten lost in her own thoughts. At least five minutes had passed since her turn began. She never could have imagined that the quiet, friendless boy in her grade would have occupied her attention even while playing chess with Sona.

With a sigh, Rias made her move, only for Sona to respond almost instantly.

“You’re concerned about Souji, I take it.”

Rias looked at her friend, unsurprised. Sona had always been one of the most intelligent people that she had ever known, and that intelligence was not limited to academics. “And you aren’t?” she challenged with a raised eyebrow. “Humans with awakened Longinus don’t have a great track record. Entire nations have fallen to their kind, and if they weren’t usually killed before they could master their powers, it’s likely this world would have long since ceased to exist.”

Sona nodded, not a hint of emotion on her face. “You speak the truth. I’m sure even in your family, you’ve already received pressure to stop hiding his existence from the other families. I know I have.”

Rias grimaced but nodded. Her brother agreed with her decision, but her parents had been in favor of telling the Bael family about Souji.

“Things are not quite as dire as you fear, Rias.” This time, Sona did surprise her. “We’re entering a new age, and even I’m not sure how it will turn out. The Grigori controls both Divine Dividing and Canis Lykaon. The Church controls Incinerate Anthem. Grauzauberer controls Absolute Demise. No one seems to be certain who possesses True Longinus, Dimension Lost, Boosted Gear, Regulus Nemea, Sephiroth Graal, Annihalation Maker, Telos Karma, or Innovate Clear, but when was the last time that five human Longinus wielders have been active?”

A shiver ran down Rias’s spine. The very idea terrified her in ways that she couldn’t even begin to express. If one Longinus wielder could tear the world apart, what could five do?

“And if rumors are to be believed, four of the five have all reached Balance Breaker.”

At that, Rias’s breath hitched. “That’s impossible.”

But Sona shook her head. “Not according to my sister. Apparently, the only one that’s a rumor is Incinerate Anthem’s current wielder. Though he apparently defeated his predecessor while she was using Balance Breaker, despite not having a Sacred Gear at the time.” Incinerate Anthem was a peculiar Sacred Gear, even among the Longinus. Unlike the others, which were bound to an individual at birth, Incinerate Anthem could transfer itself to a new wielder if they were defeated.

But Rias was more concerned with the implications of what Sona had said. Balance Breaker was a state that all Sacred Gears could eventually reach. It was, in essence, a powerup that allowed a Sacred Gear to surpass its ordinary limits. For a Longinus, surpassing limits was a serious matter. Destroying the world was a very real possibility.

As if reading her thoughts, Sona remarked, “It’s been four years since Canis Lykaon’s wielder reached Balance Breaker, and the world hasn’t ended yet.” Then she paused, as if mulling something over. “Though, I suppose one difference between them and Souji is that he isn’t directly connected to any faction. Still, I don’t imagine he’ll do anything too crazy, even if he has been training hard. It’s not in his nature to want to draw unnecessary attention to himself.”

Rias gave her a wary look. “What exactly is your intention regarding him? I notice you aren’t worried about his new strength, and you haven’t called in your debt with him yet.”

She received a thin smile in response. “I’m not worried because I know Souji. Unlike you, he’s actually beaten me in chess multiple times. He isn’t what you’d call driven, but he is intelligent and strong willed. I also haven’t been asking him to join my peerage, and I haven’t been stalking him either, so our relationship is as strong as ever. As for what I plan to do about him… well, that’s simple, isn’t it? I plan to use him in the moment that will benefit me the most with minimal personal risk. I can trust in his affection for Tomoe to keep him from acting against me until then.”

The cold, calculating explanation made Rias widen her eyes. She knew how dangerous Sona could be, and the seriousness in Sona’s eyes in that moment made her shudder.

“That’s as much as you need to know for now, at least,” Sona added after a moment, a cold gleam in her eyes.

Perhaps, Rias had been taking things too lightly thus far. While she had been focusing on her high school life, she couldn’t help but suspect that Sona had been making plans that would affect her life for years to come.

* * *

Next Update: April 1, 2021


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